Hugh Bailey: It's not about a piece of paper

Published 3:12 pm, Friday, July 19, 2013

As the Paul Vallas certification case makes its inevitable way to the state Supreme Court, the story of his defense has been set: This is all a technicality.

It's about paperwork. If his case is considered on the merits, this story goes, it's a no-brainer in the superintendent's favor.

But it's not that simple.

To start with, the technicality matters. Certification is required for positions like superintendent so politicians can't fill them with unqualified hacks. Make an exception here, however justified, and you open the door for more special treatment down the road.

It has always been the case that out-of-state superintendents can be hired in Connecticut. The state can grant a waiver if someone has been certified as a superintendent elsewhere. The problem for Vallas is that he apparently never was, in any of his previous stops. His preferred school leadership title has been "CEO," which doesn't do much to assuage people who are convinced this is all a con to promote privatization.

A series of letters and op-eds this past week have laid out the pro-Vallas case. Some points are valid, others questionable. One writer said he needs more time, pointing out that school systems can't be turned around in the 18 months Vallas has been here.

True enough. But it was Vallas himself who set those standards. His goal, he told this newspaper's editorial board, was to show that a district can be turned around not in five years or 10 years, but in one year.

He started on an interim basis at the end of 2011 and was going to lead the search for a full-time superintendent. Then in mid-2012 he said he would stay through the end of the following school year. Instead, he signed a new, three-year contract, but he says he can opt out of it after a year.

And people accuse his opponents of promoting instability.

As for the long list of his successes, some of them are surely legitimate. But supporters give him credit, for example, for the new Fairchild Wheeler Magnet School, set to open this fall, which was in the works for years before Vallas showed up. They credit him with balancing the budget, but that came partly because the city finally increased its annual outlay, and partly because the district got money from the state in exchange for effectively letting Hartford pick the next superintendent. That's not strings attached, that's hands tied behind your back.

He has avoided teacher layoffs, which is certainly good, but only part of the story. When employment is cut by attrition, that's a fine thing for the people who would otherwise lose their jobs, but it means fewer teachers doing the same amount of work. In the classroom, failing to fill open positions has the same effect as layoffs.

Cuts to faculty are popular with people who imagine that everyone employed by the schools is simply a parasite on the system, but it doesn't work that way. Cuts to central office staff have real meaning.

None of which changes the fact that running an urban school district is a thankless job. There are seldom good answers, and never enough money.

The point isn't that everything he's done is wrong. It's that the Supreme Court isn't likely to care. Its concern is whether his certification is legitimate, and nothing else.

Still, his fans insist his track record take precedence. If that's the case, then it is impossible to ignore the utterly dire state of public schools in Chicago and Philadelphia today.

He's been out of those jobs for years, so maybe he shouldn't be blamed. Others aren't so sure. "It is no coincidence that the Philadelphia School District is facing a plight similar to that of the Chicago public schools, with mass school closings, teacher layoffs and budget shortfalls," Jerusha O. Conner, an education professor at Villanova University, told a Philadelphia reporter last week. There's no mystery who instituted the reforms in those cities that led to today's debacles.

His supporters say his record should speak for itself. They should listen to what his record says.